Monitoring is most often discussed in the context of the backend systems and processes powering an organization’s internal operations, but it’s an equally important priority when it comes to the corporate website, which serves as a lynchpin for communications with the outside world. And in consumer-facing segments such as retail and banking, it’s a mission-critical service like any other.

AppDynamics Inc. is taking that into account with the latest addition to its popular performance management service, a cloud-based testing feature that complements its existing capabilities for identifying usability issues on sites with functionality for preempting them. That’s achieved with a geographically-targeted diagnostics mechanism aimed at spotting identifying problems before they spread.

Browser Synthetic Monitoring, as the extension is called, automatically rusn availability and performance checks using the freely available WebPageTest engine from different locations around the world to find localized usability hiccups. Anomalous behavior is then compared with an organization’s service-level goals and reported to the operations team in the event of a violation.

Administrators can use AppDynamics’ pre-existing existing analytics functionality to break down the problem and try to identify the root cause,  a process aided by the fact that WebPageTest uses real browsers to run its tests instead of simulations like some alternatives. That allows for a more detailed diagnosis that can help isolate the issue faster.

Also contributing to the accuracy of the results is a feature that allows the service to automatically redo a test if a problem is detected so to rule out false positives, which is a potentially major time saver for operations professionals in global organizations that regularly check their sites across multiple geographies. A complementary scheduler makes it possible to tune testing frequency for just the right balance of visibility and cost.

That granular control is particularly useful for websites with varying traffic throughout the year, such as e-commerce services that face an increased risk of overburdening the underlying infrastructure during the holiday shopping season. It’s also handy.for smaller organizations that have a limited testing budget and want to keep the number of checks to a minimum.

Photo via AppDynamics